


Sweet

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus Stories [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Banter, Complicated Relationships, Consent Issues, Cultural Differences, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Kissing, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 03:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20867432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: The Iron Bull and Dorian are both still trying to make sense of one another.





	Sweet

Dorian was drunk.

This is was a somewhat common state of affairs: it was the state he rather preferred to be in, as it so happened, and he had to concentrate as he slowly descended the stairs from the library. The serving girls were counting the empty bottles as they took them away from the library, he knew _that_, and undoubtedly Ambassador Montilyet had a lovely little page in her diary where she noted down with a tally how many bottles of drink he had consumed in an evening.

Tonight, it was three – a slow night.

His head was buzzing most gloriously, rather tuning out the muttering of templars that passed him on the stairs, and he felt a little unsteady, but not awfully so – it was not unlike moving about on the deck of a ship. The world swayed beneath him, yes, but he was not so out of it that he could not account for the swell.

“Drunk again?” Solas asked, and his lips were thin as he looked up at Dorian. Dorian could feel the warm spread of magic around him – almost every mage had some energy to them, that one could feel. With Vivienne, it was cool, settling on the skin; with Minaeve, it was a chemical bluster that you almost thought you could smell; with Dalish, of the Bull’s Chargers, it was a surprisingly comforting, cool softness that reminded Dorian of the way wet leaves compressed beneath your boot. Solas felt… like _stone_, like the stone in ancient ruins, with the spiced lingering of veilfire tangled amongst it.

“Oh, goodness, am I in for a patented lecture from the very best of us?” Dorian asked, raising his chin. Solas didn’t say a word, but he closed the book in his lap, setting it aside, and when he stood to his feet, Dorian had to steel himself to keep himself from flinching away. Not that Solas would ever truly _shout_ at him, not that he’d raise his voice, Dorian didn’t think, and yet—

He remembered the first time he’d gotten truly drunk. It had been just him and Maximus, one of the lesser sons of the Amari family, and they’d been scarcely past fourteen, either of them, each of them shoved toward young ladies, and they’d only wanted to stay _together_, to avoid all the boredom of the party. They’d gotten into a very dry Antivan brandy, and between them, managed most of the bottle. Dorian had only ever drank little sips of wine before, for toasts or to drink a glass with his dinner, never spirits.

That hadn’t been the first night they’d ever touched one another below the belt, but it had been the first night, Dorian thought, that he let himself think about it.

“Do I lecture you so often?” Solas asked softly. Oh, he was in one of his _pensive_ moods – the ones where he was surprisingly easy to be around, where he was more thoughtful than cutting, more sad than proud.

“You always think it, no doubt,” Dorian murmured, “even when you do not voice it. There is Dorian Pavus, again: he drinks, he lies with men, he squanders himself. Is that not what you think?”

“I did not know I bore such a resemblance to your tutors in Tevinter,” Solas said, somewhat cuttingly, his eyes hard. “My apologies.”

“I’m sorry. That was… unfair.”

“You are not wrong to think that so many in Skyhold hate you,” Solas said, reaching out, and he plucked a piece of torn paper from Dorian’s sleeve. “Your error is in believing me to be among their number.”

“You hate Tevinter,” Dorian said.

“And the Dalish, of course,” Solas murmured. “And Orlais, the Grey Wardens, Ferelden, Nevarra, Antiva, Par Vollen and the Qunari— Need I go on?” Dorian turned his face away. “What I hate is injustice. Slavery. For the rights of others to be taken away – or worse, for them to give them, freely, to those that would call themselves their masters. You are learning to feel the same, it seems.” Solas watched him for a long moment, his expression focused, and then he asked, quietly, “You are going to the tavern?”

“You’re going to stop me?” Dorian asked archly, surprised at how quickly the defiance crackled in his voice. Solas often made him feel on _edge_, somehow, always politer than Dorian expected him to be.

“There you go again, mistaking me for your nursery maid,” Solas said mildly. “I shall not stop you from going anywhere – but when you make the choice to cut through my part of the rotunda, I can only assume it is because you are hoping I will speak to you.”

Had he wanted Solas to speak with him? Perhaps. One night, when they were as yet new in Skyhold, Solas had invited Dorian to sit on his sofa and they had talked about the Fade and drank and talked and drank until it was deep into the night. Dorian had fallen asleep in his place, and he’d woken to find himself curled up beneath Solas’ blanket, his head on the elf’s pillow: Solas himself was sleeping in his armchair, apparently undeterred by the position. He had let Dorian sleep in all he had for a _bed_, and…

Dorian wanted to do it again. He didn’t know how to ask. He had come through a few times before, with bottles of wine, and each time Solas had politely refused; he had tried to sit with Solas, and received polite but nudging reminders that Solas had work to be getting on with.

Friendship, in the south, was a complicated beast.

With Sera, with Vivienne, at least it might bear similarities with all he knew back home – one approached friendship with what one was prepared to offer, and one received things in return. He and Sera laughed with one another, shared an easy humour and a creative mind, no matter how discomforted Sera was by his magic, or Dorian by her curious habits: they exchanged languages and recipes and little tidbits of information. What he and Vivienne exchanged was even easier – gossip, to be certain, but little clues about those templars and mages about Skyhold that were advantageous or dangerous, leverage swapping back and forth between them as letters between two great houses.

Dorian never felt like he had enough to offer Solas. It never felt like there was much that Solas wanted to offer him – some nights, long nights, he would sit with Lavellan and speak to him at such length, or they would go off together on long, solitary walks. For all his protestations, Solas trusted Lavellan because he, too, was an elf.

Or perhaps it was merely that Lavellan hadn’t grown up with a slave for a nursery maid, giving his childish demands to staff who received no coin for their work, and could not say no to him no matter how unruly he became.

“Perhaps you might like the walk,” Dorian said. “Ensure I get to the tavern unbothered.”

Solas frowned. “If you are so drunk, Dorian, that you cannot _defend_ yourself, I hardly think—”

“_No_,” Dorian hissed. “Fasta _vass_, that isn’t what I meant.”

“Then—”

“Good _night_, Solas,” Dorian said, moving past him and hating the way his skin felt hot beneath his clothes, so humiliated as he was, so _embarrassed_. Was he blushing? Why was it so thrice-damned _difficult_ to talk to anybody? Solas, he was a nightmare; Blackwall, a class-obsessed _bastard_; Cole, so sweet and yet so difficult; the Iron Bull…

Best not to think about the Iron Bull.

“Alright, magister?” a young templar leered, and Dorian shoved past him, walking a little bit faster toward the Herald’s Rest, wishing he’d had more to drink.

Solas was… hard. And it was infuriating that Solas was so difficult, because Dorian thought he rather _liked_ Solas, when he wasn’t being too overbearing. He had such insight upon the magic they each used, and researching with him was a dream – he was a natural academic, so wise and with such a fresh way of looking at things, it was _wonderful!_ And yet as soon as Dorian attempted to speak with him, man-to-man, friendly, it was as though…

Cullen, there was a gentleman surprisingly easy to speak with. For a templar, he was lovely. Muscular, handsome, certainly not a chore to look at, and he was so much _fun_. Yes, rather shy, and with those regrets in his past he wished he could abandon, but he was so sweetly earnest. So friendly.

Josephine, she was pleasant – they could speak of clothes, of wine, and yet Dorian so often felt as though she was trying to find the strings she might use to pull at him. He couldn’t fault her for it: it was her job, her _vocation_, and yet it set him on edge, somehow, reminded him of his mother. She was softer than her, of course, softer and sweeter, not judgemental at all, and so caring, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she might try to get him to marry some lovely young lady.

Dorian missed his mother.

He missed his father.

For that matter, he missed Tevinter.

He was going to drink the tavern dry.

\--

The Vint was drunk when he came into the Herald’s Rest. This wasn’t unusual. He was drunk pretty much every evening, after a certain hour, and he didn’t usually come to the tavern until _after_ he’d already had a few things to drink.

Those things had been bottles, in this case, Bull could tell.

He and Dorian were okay again, he thought, after the… _mistake_. And it was definitely a mistake, the Iron Bull’s mistake, because he was growing complacent, this long away from the Qun, with his Chargers. Hissrad seemed like a distant dream, sometimes, or a mask he wore for writing a few letters every week.

He sent updates. He got letters back, he got orders.

Keep an eye on this, check out this. Some of ‘em, he showed to Leliana. Some of ‘em, he didn’t.

Some of them weren’t nice.

None of them were nice.

“Is it okay the other way around?” Krem had asked, one night, only a little after joining Bull. “The Aqun-Athlok? Could they think you were a guy, but then you’re… I don’t know, a Tamassran?”

“Sure,” Bull said. “S’been known to happen.”

He hadn’t meant anything by it.

It had turned over in Bull’s head for months. That was the danger of bas – they made you think in ways the Qun didn’t, made you think of could-haves or might-have-beens or would-bes, and that was dangerous. That wasn’t letting yourself go with the tide: that was… something else.

Bull didn’t think he’d have been a better Tamassran than he was a Hissrad, or a Sten, or a Karashok, or any other role he’d had. It was easier, in some ways, being the Iron Bull. There was consistency there, but there was _meant_ to be consistency in the Qun, in…

“Oh, do you think?” he heard Dorian’s voice, carrying through the tavern. One of the scouts, an elf wearing vallaslin on his face, the vallaslin of Falon’Din, a Dalish god of death, was leaning in toward him. His knee was touching Dorian’s, and Dorian was laughing as he spoke with him. “My dear man, I think you’ve allowed yourself to overestimate your exoticism.”

“Oh, yeah?” the Dalish asked. He said something in elvish, something Bull couldn’t make out, and Dorian gasped, and smacked his arm.

“I know enough to know what _that_ means,” he purred. He slurred some of the words, and he was unsteady on his feet, so drunk he wouldn’t be able to fight back, if someone wanted to hurt him. This was one of the new scouts, one that Bull didn’t know yet, except by sight – he’d only been here a few days.

He moved like a scout. They’d recruited him out of one of the Dalish clans, not the one that Loranil had come from, but a different one – the Sabrae clan. The Iron Bull didn’t trust him. Not yet.

But then, he wouldn’t trust any guy he didn’t fucking _know_ with Dorian when the guy was like this, barely able to stand. He was fucking smashed, off his head, and Bull had noticed, the past while, that he never went back to a guy’s quarters sober. He was always at _least_ tipsy, usually black-out drunk, and Bull…

He didn’t like that.

Seven nights a week, back at Skyhold, Dorian was drunk. Three to four nights a week, he’d sleep in somebody else’s bed – and Bull knew that he didn’t let guys come up to his room, not ever. He didn’t usually sleep with the same men twice, certainly didn’t let it become regular.

He looked at Bull, sometimes, when he came into the Herald’s Rest. He didn’t come over on the nights he wanted to get laid, but sometimes he’d come and sit down with Bull and the Chargers, be surprisingly shy with Krem, who couldn’t give a fuck about pretending to be interested in him. He’d flirt, and he’d argue, but mostly he’d be quiet and watch Bull talk, listen to the stories they told, listened to them bullshit each other.

He’d never sit close enough to touch.

The Bull didn’t know when it had all changed. In the beginning, in Bull’s head, the guy had been _Pavus_. He’d been a useful weakness for Bull to fuck, maybe get a little info out of him, but that was before Haven burned, and before all that _shit_ once they got up to Skyhold. He’d become _Dorian_. And he’d become more than Dorian – he was Dorian who smiled, who laughed, who was really, genuinely pretty, who made Bull laugh, who made Bull relax.

He wasn’t scared of Bull, Bull knew that, now. He wasn’t still pissed, Bull didn’t think, about the conquer you comment. But he didn’t like to come too close to Bull, not when he was _drunk_, and that was interesting, because it’d be easy to think Dorian didn’t trust Bull with him, when he was drunk, but that wasn’t true.

He’d gone out to the tent of a Tal-Vashoth trader four weeks back, had walked funny for two days, had begged off going anywhere on horseback for three. It hadn’t been from just getting fucked, either: Bull had seen his ass when he was changing and it had been a mess of black bruises, some of them plain in handprints.

It wasn’t that sex was unhealthy.

It wasn’t that a _lot_ of sex was unhealthy.

But—

Shit. Was the Vint even _able_ to fuck a guy when he wasn’t half-unconscious with drink?

“Hey, Harel,” Bull said, and the scout glanced up at him. A lot passed in the look between them: the irritated understanding, in the moment, that Bull was here to take Dorian off his hands, and that if Harel argued, he wouldn’t win; that if he tried to insult the Bull, it’d go bad for him; if he tried to make a scene, it’d go bad for him; that there was no way to get his rocks off with this _particular_ mage tonight. He probably thought Bull wanted to take the mage to fuck him himself – fine. “Mind if I borrow this guy for a second? Gotta talk to him about the expedition out next week.”

“Yes, ser,” said the scout, leaning back and sliding off the bar stool. “Can do.”

He slunk off, and Dorian stared up at him, his lips parted. He was pretty, yeah, but like this, pupils blown wide, swaying a little, he looked _fucked_. Fucked, and… yeah. Yeah, Bull saw the hunger in the way he looked up at him, the desperate want in his face, his body.

“Hello, Bull,” Dorian purred. “Are you going to take me upstairs and _ravage_ me?”

“I’ll take you upstairs, if you want,” Bull said. “But why don’t we sit down with Krem, huh?”

“Krem is dreadfully handsome, but it’s been awfully long since I laid with a soporati,” Dorian said, stumbling a little as he got to his feet, and Bull caught him by the waist, keeping him upright as they stepped back toward the Chargers. As soon as Bull sat, Dorian threw himself clumsily into his lap, and Bull allowed it, wrapped his arms around his middle and pulled him to sit there more steadily.

He’d never do this, sober. Not with any man. He let himself be dragged into a man’s lap sometimes, when he was drunk, but that was all. A few times, he’d seen Dorian sit on top of Sera’s knees while Sera yelled and complained, but watching the two of them it was plain there was a give and take there – they wrestled, they fought, like they were made of the same stuff.

Bull didn’t poke at him.

He held Dorian in his place for at least an hour, waiting for him to sober up a little – now and then, he took a drink of water, and every time Dorian grabbed for the bottle in his hands and took a few sips himself.

“Aren’t you going to take me upstairs?” Dorian whispered in Bull’s ear. “Won’t you show me precisely how you wield that dastardly weapon of yours?”

“We can go upstairs,” Bull said. “If you want.”

\--

Dorian’s head was _spinning_.

Bull walked behind him on the stairs, and whenever Dorian fell, stumbled, Bull caught him. He carried him the last few steps, and Dorian felt like a princess in some Nevarran fairy tale, carried in Bull’s arms.

He was… dreadfully drunk. He ought have been asleep by now, should have spent a lovely evening with some fellow he’d barely remember in the morning, go home with a pleasant ache in his bones and know that someone had wanted him enough to _touch_ him, but for now he was still awake, and he wanted, he wanted—

He usually didn’t let himself come here to Bull. He wouldn’t want Dorian again, once he’d had him once, of that Dorian was sure, no matter how the flirtation built and built between them, and Dorian, he wanted it to _last_. He didn’t want to lose the mystique, didn’t want to lose the way that Bull looked at him, sometimes, as though Dorian was something delicious on a plate before him, and he was _starving_…

“Fuck me,” Dorian said breathlessly as Bull laid him down on the bed. He looked at Bull’s hands, at his shoulders, his body, and he yearned, he _wanted_, thirsted. Bull looked down at him, cool, implacable. “Go on,” Dorian goaded, spreading his thighs apart, lifting his thighs off the bed. “I want the forbidden, don’t I? Show me what I’m aching for.”

Bull kneeled on the floor, in front of Dorian at the end of the bed, and he was tall enough that he wasn’t actually in line with Dorian’s crotch, was almost in line with his _chest_. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on the edge of the bed, between Dorian’s knees. “Why don’t you kiss me?” he asked.

“Kiss you?” Dorian repeated.

Men kissed him. It was true, that men kissed him, and Dorian liked kissing, but it was so often too biting, too possessive. Men shoved their tongues into his mouth, or kissed hard at the side of it… Dorian preferred to be on his belly, or on his hands and knees, so that they’d fuck him properly, not waste all that time on his mouth.

Men didn’t usually _ask_ him to kiss them.

“Next best thing after sewing my mouth shut, is it?” Dorian asked, his own voice sounding brittle to his ears. “Keeping it occupied?”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Bull said. His face didn’t change, didn’t reveal anything – not even amusement, let alone anger.

“I want to,” Dorian snapped, and he moved forward on the bed, even though it made the room move threateningly. Shoving his mouth against Bull’s was clumsier than he intended it to be, but Bull took control, caught his cheeks and pulled him back a little so that he couldn’t kiss him too hard, too messily…

The Iron Bull was infuriatingly good at kissing, for a beastly big bull. He was smooth and measured and thoughtful, and it actually, genuinely felt glorious. Bull kissed him slowly, wonderfully, and Dorian’s head was spinning, not just from the alcohol, but from the _sweetness_ of it, the…

Dorian didn’t think he’d ever been kissed like this.

Slowly, carefully, without worrying anyone would walk in and interrupt, without worrying the other man was about to turn him over and choke him, without… anything. It was just them, just Dorian and Bull in bed, and Bull was kissing him, and oh, oh—

“Why won’t you let me touch you?” Dorian asked when he tried to reach for Bull’s belt, for the third time, and Bull pushed his hand away. “Don’t you want me?”

“I want you just like this,” Bull murmured against his mouth. “No need to rush. You can ride the bull next time.”

“Next time?” Dorian asked, dizzied. “What next time?”

“What, you think I’m gonna let you get away now I’ve had a taste of this?” Bull asked, and his thumb slid up from Dorian’s chin to his lower lip. The skin tingled where Bull’s thumb brushed it, and Dorian breathed in, staring up at him. “Nah. You know how hard it is to get Tevinter stuff worth tasting around here. I’m gonna _savour_ you.”

“What happened to— to gristle and fat?”

“Dunno,” Bull said, and squeezed Dorian’s arse, which was only lightly cushioned. “Guess it’s on somebody else.”

Dorian surged forward to kiss him again.

\--

The next morning, Dorian shifted under the blanket… Blanket_s_. He was under two of them, and he was pressed against a wonderfully warm cushion. He was almost frightened to open his eyes, feeling his cheek pressed against Bull’s scarred chest, his fingers pressed against the Iron Bull’s belly.

The Iron Bull wasn’t like some of the templars that tried to make sure they looked chiselled underneath their armour. He was built like a bear: the muscle on his body was insulated by beautifully soft fat, and Dorian all but sank against his chest and his belly, such _heat_ radiating from it…!

The ceiling was broken, Dorian realised. Cool air was filtering in from through the tarpaulin over it, but so were flickers of gloriously bright sunlight, and Dorian blinked up at it as it filtered through.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Bull said, curling his fingers through Dorian’s hair, and Dorian bit back a sigh at the simple pleasure of it, at a hand _stroking_ his hair… “Thought maybe you were in some kinda Fade coma.”

“You didn’t fuck me,” Dorian said. It sounded like a brat’s complaint, and he felt himself flush. His head ached, and his mouth was dry, but seeming to read his mind, Bull supported him to sit up, and brought a waterskein to his mouth. Dorian drank greedily, and there was more than water in this – there was a mild anodyne in it, he could taste, just for hangovers.

“Nah,” Bull said. “You were too drunk.”

Dorian pulled away, affronted. “I _beg_ your pardon. If you found my state so disagreeable, why _ever_ did you—”

“Hey. It’s no big thing,” Bull said. “Just don’t like fucking someone that might regret it in the morning. Can’t tell if you really want it, if you’re too drunk.”

“That’s hardly been a problem for anybody else.”

“Kay. I’m not anybody else.”

Dorian swallowed another mouthful of the water. He hesitated. “I’m,” he said, waiting for the rejection, the polite _no_, the gentle reminder that Bull had shit to do other than him, “rather sober now.”

“Me too,” Bull murmured, smirking at him. “Whaddya think two sober people can get up to in a big bed like this?”

“Goodness, Bull,” Dorian said, not letting the relief show in his face as he fell onto his back. How long had it been, since he’d had sex with a man sober? He didn’t know. A while. He didn’t usually like the way they looked at him, and in any case, if he was too sober, it was too easy to stay – his skin was more numb, when he was drunk, he didn’t crave to be nearly so _close_…

He wanted to be close to Bull, now.

Oh, he wanted, he ached—

“I hardly know,” Dorian whispered, and Bull leaned and started to kiss his chest, but Dorian grabbed for him. “No— Won’t you… Never mind.”

“Kiss you?” Bull asked, and he smiled so… so _sweetly_. What in Andraste’s name gave him the right to look so _sweet_, looking up at Dorian like that? Monstrous thing, a Qunari, a bastard with rippling muscles and such teeth and _horns_, and the smile was so… “Can do.”

Dorian moaned helplessly into Bull’s mouth when Bull leaned in to kiss him.

He rather wished it could last forever. Such a shame it wouldn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to hit up [my ask on Tumblr,](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask) to talk about DA in general, and definitely to recommend blogs to follow! I am open for requests (for Origins, II, and Inq). I also run a no-drama Dragon Age Discord, which [you can join here.](https://discordapp.com/invite/ttgP5v8) Please comment if you can!


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